Submissive by Moonlight

by Sindra van Yssel

  She closed her eyes. He waited. After several minutes she sighed. “I don’t know. Something. That’s all I can do.”

  “Do you know where he saw it?”

  “No.” She paused. “Wait a minute. Not from what I saw tonight, but earlier in the week, when I was trying to pray for Jerry, I felt like I was looking through a fog. Maybe rain. Or he didn’t have his glasses on. I don’t know. But I got the feeling I was seeing something important. I don’t know if I was seeing what Jerry saw, or, what… It didn’t make any sense, except it was important, and yet I couldn’t really see anything.”

  “How was it important?”

  She thought a moment. “As if he wished he hadn’t seen it.”

  He tried to think about it all as if it made sense. Jerry saw something. Now he was afraid, and with other people who were afraid. “Could he have been kidnapped for what he saw?”

  “Could be.”

  “The last place Jerry was seen was the gas station where he worked as a late-night cashier. They have security tapes, and we went through them enough to know that he left his job on time and healthy. We didn’t know to look for clues as to why. Dammit.” It was probably erased by now. But maybe not. The “tape” wasn’t a tape; it was digital. No reason they couldn’t store tons of nights on a hard drive and never erase them. On the other hand, video took up a fair amount of space. They wouldn’t keep them forever.

  “Let me make a phone call.”

  She nodded and moved to the side. He couldn’t help being distracted by watching her. He took in the way her hips moved, the way her breasts jiggled. She had curves in all the right places, curves that invited his hands. He wished he didn’t have work to do. “You’re a lovely sight to wake up to. Especially naked.”

  She blushed. “Thank you.”

  He found the number of the gas station in his call history. Stevens, the manager, was working the night shift until he could hire someone last Nolan heard, so even at three in the morning, there was a chance to get him.

  As Nolan had feared, the file had been erased. He thanked the man.

  Marisa was smiling.

  “What are you grinning about?” he asked crossly. “They deleted the tape.”

  “Damn.” Her smile faded. “I was happy you were following up on what I saw.”

  He nodded. The whole belief thing. It didn’t do any harm to pursue all the angles, especially when he didn’t have any ideas himself. He reached over and pulled her to him, enjoying her softness.

  “Mmm,” she said, cuddling. Without the tape, he didn’t know how to follow up on what she saw. They couldn’t go house to house through the county looking at basements. Or track Oreo sales. Not without some clue. It was mighty tempting to let it drop and take Marisa to bed. He wanted to push her more. He wanted to make her come again.

  “Wait!” she said suddenly. “You said deleted.”

  “Huh?”

  “Deleted the tape. You don’t delete a tape. You throw it away. Or tape over it.”

  “Right. I guess tape was a metaphor. It’s actually a computer file.”

  She grinned. “And computer files can be recovered. When you delete a file on a computer, you don’t really get rid of the data. It just doesn’t show up in the directory anymore, and the space is available to be written over. But bits of it anyway will usually be around for a long time, still accessible to the computer. We can probably get that file back.”

  Shit. He had known that, at one point. Back in training. But that had been a while ago, and he had never worked a crime scene where it had come up. Crime out in the country had a tendency to be pretty low-tech.

  “Can you do it?” he asked.

  “Unless you’ve got another expert.”

  “Nope.”

  “I’ll need access to the hard drive where the data is stored, though.”

  “Go get dressed.” He took out of his phone again and hit Redial.

  * * * *

  It’d been interesting to watch the look on Old Man Stevens’s face when Nolan introduced Marisa as a police expert. Marisa had a reputation around town, and it was for being a flake, not a computer nerd. While she was working on the files, though, he had another thought. Marisa knew Jerry. What if she knew more than she was letting on? What if the whole story about a vision was a way to let her tamper with some of the evidence? Rationally, that made a hell of a lot more sense than her psychic powers.

  So why was his gut telling him to trust her?

  Nolan shook it off. She had no way of knowing for sure that he’d use her as the way to get to the files. He could easily have taken her suggestion and asked someone else to do the computer work, in which case she would have drawn attention to them without being able to affect the outcome. That’s probably what he should have done. Either way, Marisa couldn’t have known how it would play out, unless she was psychic.

  And if she was psychic, then she could have had the vision.

  Twenty minutes passed until she came out with a grin on her face. “File found. Or files. I mailed you the one from the day Jerry disappeared, and the two from the days before that. The earlier ones are too damaged.”

  Jerry worked an eight-hour shift. Nolan knew he was in for watching a very long, very boring movie, all because of Marisa’s psychic vision. Even if she was right, there was no guarantee that it was anything that happened at the gas station, but it was the most likely place, and the only place Jerry had been they had any way of checking.

  He thanked Stevens for his time and drove Marisa back up to her house. He was planning to watch the file back at the station after hitting a donut shop for breakfast. They didn’t speak much on the way back. Something was bothering him, something he felt he’d missed. She was polite enough to let him think. He appreciated that, but he didn’t want to get distracted by his growing feelings about how well she suited him.

  “You can use my computer if you wish, Sir,” she said as he parked in her driveway. “I don’t have a job I’m working on at the moment.”

  He noted the Sir, and it busted his train of thought. Not that he was getting anywhere with it anyway. “I don’t think I’d be concentrating very well with you around,” he said, not moving from the car. He would have been happy to get her door for her, but he suspected she’d have it open by the time he got around, and anyway, it was going to be hard enough to leave as it was.

  She smiled. “I guess I’ll take that as a compliment. At least let me get you some breakfast,” she said. “And pack you up with a thermos of coffee. You’ll call me if you find anything?”

  Call her. That was what he’d been forgetting, the phone call Jerry had made to her. If he hadn’t been wrapped up in her sexual attractiveness and the fact that she was supposed to be a psychic expert, he would have concentrated on that. “What time did Jerry call you. What day?”

  She shrugged. “Tuesday? I don’t know.”

  Tuesday would have been a whole day before Jerry disappeared. “Did he call on your cell phone or your land line?”

  “I don’t even have a land line anymore. Cell phone.”

  “Check your calls, then.”

  “Oh, duh.” Marisa got her phone out of her purse and flicked through it. Then she turned it to show him.

  Wednesday, at 3:22 in the morning. He recognized the number, because it had been the same one he was calling earlier in the day. The gas station.

  “He didn’t wake you up?”

  “I stay up late and sleep in most days. When I don’t have men over.”

  A surge of jealousy hit him. How many men did she have, anyway?

  There was a twinkle in her eye. He had the distinct feeling his chain was being yanked, and calmed down.

  “Come in and let me make you some breakfast and coffee. Then I’m going to sleep, so you won’t be distracted. You got a snooze, but I’ve been up all night long.”

  He nodded. The fact that Marisa was going to be asleep put his mind at ease. The station would have its own distractions, so
he was better off at Marisa’s place. He had to double-check his reasoning, though, because he knew he had another motivation for staying. He wanted to be close to her.

  He wouldn’t have to check the whole video, just the part leading up to 3:22. Whatever had happened to make Jerry scared, it had happened by then. The rest he could watch on fast forward. Jerry’s shift started at ten and ended at six, so he was still in for a long stretch. He’d start by watching the last hour before the phone call.

  He got to work. She brought him some scrambled eggs, toast, and some strong black coffee, and he thanked her without looking up.

  Marisa was asleep by the time he found an answer. What Jerry saw remained a mystery, as the camera was focused on him and the cash register. But there was no mistaking the sequence. At 3:12, Jerry was staring out the window and suddenly turned away. At 3:14, two young men about Jerry’s age came in and paid for some gas. Nolan recognized one of them as Kyle Jankowski, who he’d busted for pot a year ago. He suspected Kyle of being into some harder drugs and had hoped he’d scared the kid straight. They talked to Jerry for a couple of minutes after they got the receipt. All Nolan could see was the back of the other kid. Somehow even that looked familiar, although he couldn’t identify him. For the next five minutes after they left, Jerry paced around the little room like a caged animal before finally picking up the phone and calling Marisa.

  Nolan poured himself another cup of coffee and kept watching. Jerry was a nervous Nellie until six, sometimes pacing, sometimes putting his head in his hands. Obviously, either something he’d seen at 3:12, or something in the conversation at 3:14, had completely altered his mood. Why hadn’t Jerry called the police if he felt in danger? Instead he’d turned to Marisa. It didn’t make sense. Okay, some people believed in magic. But Marisa had turned him down. So why weren’t the police option number two?

  The usual reason people didn’t call the police when they should was that they were up to something illegal. Maybe Jerry had some pot on him, the way the Jankowski kid had the one day. Maybe he’d filched something from the till, although Stevens had been asked about that, and he’d said everything was straight. Nolan shook his head. It didn’t add up.

  Either way, the next step was to talk to Kyle. He scrawled a note for Marisa. He didn’t know when he’d be back. He wanted to add some endearment but thought better of it. Being a policeman’s girlfriend wasn’t much of a life for anyone. He closed the door quietly on his way out.

  Chapter Seven

  Gone on police business. Don’t call me, I’ll call you, the note said.

  Did men ever call when they said that? Marisa had admired his focus on the case once he got a sniff of a lead. But now she was wondering if maybe she should have been insulted instead.

  Then again, he may have had good reason not to want to be distracted. Still, it seemed so cold after the night before. Maybe for him it was just physical. Well, physical with some kinky mind games. There wasn’t anything wrong with just physical, was there? Except, of course, for the fact that she wanted more.

  The skeptical cop was the last person in the world she should be falling in love with, although she thought maybe he’d become more open-minded. Maybe. In any case, there was nothing she could do now except wait.

  She tried to be productive and managed about twenty minutes of cleaning. She knew she felt a connection with Nolan. Was she deluding herself into thinking that because she’d had a clear vision after having sex with him that meant there was some special magic going on between them? She didn’t think so. She knew what she felt. The question was, did he feel it too? Probably not, if the note was any indication.

  She sat down at the computer to get her mind off him and fired up a video game. She tried building towers and matching jewels, but none of them held her interest.

  Then suddenly, her pulse started racing. She told herself to calm down, to not be anxious. But then she knew. He was in danger. She could feel it. Somewhere, somehow. And there wasn’t a damn thing she could do about it, except pray.

  KYLE’S MOM HAD answered the door and said he wasn’t home, hadn’t been for days. He’d told her he was staying with his girlfriend. Nolan went to the girl’s apartment, but she hadn’t seen Kyle either. His instincts told him both women were telling him the truth. There went his lead.

  He went to the grocery store where he’d run into Marisa. It was the only one around for twenty miles and was within walking distance of Kyle’s girlfriend’s. He wasn’t sure what he was going to do. Ask who’d been buying Oreos lately? While he sat in the parking lot trying to figure out his next move, Kyle came out with a bag full of groceries.

  Standard operating procedure was to call in before following someone, so he did. He called in and talked to the dispatcher, Frank. He left a message for the chief to say he was going to tail Kyle and see where he went, and asked if there were any other officers nearby. Tailing was best done with two, in case one was spotted. But Frank said no and promised to let the chief know when he got back from the talking to the county executive. It would have to do.

  Kyle got in a beige sedan and started driving out of town. Nolan gave him some distance and followed. After four miles Kyle turned down a side road that led off on the south side of Mulvaney Creek, and Nolan gave him even more distance. There were only two houses on that road, both farmhouses. A second car turning down it would be bound to attract suspicion, and it wouldn’t be hard to find him once he parked. The road didn’t go through.

  Nolan cruised past the first farmhouse. There wasn’t any sign of Kyle or his car. He drove up to the second and came up empty again. What the hell?

  He thought of giving Marisa a call, but that was silly. She’d pointed the way so far. Whether that was luck or magic, he couldn’t be sure, but he couldn’t expect her to know how Kyle had made a sedan disappear. He started driving back when he spotted a few tire tracks in the dirt. There was something of a path leading off between the two farms. He parked and took a look. The tracks were consistent with a car the size of Kyle’s, but as far as he knew, no one else lived out here. He shrugged and decided to leave his car on the side of the road. He’d hoof it.

  It took nearly half an hour, but eventually he spotted Kyle’s car parked by the side of an old house he hadn’t known was there. The paint on the house was chipped off almost to nonexistence, and ivy tangled its way on the south wall. Weeds were growing all around it. Months of weeds, maybe years. But they’d been trampled on recently in a path from Kyle’s car to the front door. He called the office again. There was still no one there. He couldn’t even raise Frank on the public number. Bloody hell. Someone was supposed to answer that 24-7. He took out the radio and reported in, but no one replied. The officers could all be in the middle of something, but where the hell was Frank?

  Given the state of the place, he’d love to know if anyone owned it. If Kyle was squatting, then entering wouldn’t be trespassing, and it wouldn’t require a warrant. He wanted inside but knew Marisa’s vision about Jerry wouldn’t constitute a reason to enter without papers to a judge. He wasn’t sure why it was sufficient for him, but that reasoning would have to wait for another time.

  There were windows, however. He could have a peek in. He sidled up to one but couldn’t make out anything except that the living room wasn’t furnished. No one was living there. He moved around to the back and found another window, this one leading into a kitchen. There wasn’t a fridge, but there was an old stove. Nolan doubted it would work. Crouching, he continued his way around the perimeter. His legs were getting itchy, probably from bugs that lived in the tall weeds.

  On the east side, he found a window barely above ground level. He almost didn’t see it because of the weeds, which meant he’d have perfect cover if he crouched down as he looked in. He resigned himself to more bug bites.

  Bingo. The room was dark, since it wasn’t getting any light to speak of from outside, but a few candles had been lit, and there was an electric camp lantern on. Jerry was tied u
p in a chair. Kyle was sitting on the floor, a shotgun on his lap. There were stacks of clear plastic bags on the floor. He couldn’t see what was in them, but he was guessing drugs. And there was another young man in a sleeping bag, probably the other guy he’d seen on the gas station video. From the wiggling he was doing, it looked as if he was trying to get some sleep. Nolan had more than enough now to justify breaking and entering, although he needed to get backup first, especially given that shotgun. Overwhelming force was the way to make sure no one got hurt. He reached for his radio, about to step away to use it when the kid in the sleeping bag turned. In the light of the camp lantern, Nolan could actually get a good look at his face.

  Aaron Mercer, Frank Mercer’s kid. No wonder he looked familiar, even from behind.

  “Put your hands up nice and slow, Nolan,” said a familiar voice from behind him. “Sorry it had to end this way. We were trying to make this bloodless. Figured if we got Jerry hooked, we could turn him. But somehow I think we’re probably going to have to shoot you.”

  From the sound of Frank’s voice, Nolan guessed the man was close. Five feet. Frank used to practice at the shooting range, and he was a horrible shot. At five feet it wouldn’t matter.

  “Frank.” Nolan didn’t turn around but slowly put up one hand. “I take it the chief isn’t ever going to get my message.” If you want to threaten a man into submission, never tell him you’re going to kill him anyway. Frank wanted a way out. Nolan didn’t think he could give him one, but maybe he could take advantage of the man’s hesitation.

  “Nope. I’m afraid not.”

  There was no way he could get his pistol out, thumb the safety off, turn around, and shoot Frank before he got shot. But he did manage to flick the radio on. He knocked it off his belt to the ground. Then he raised his other hand and turned around slowly.

  Frank was standing there, glaring. Frank looked down at the radio. Nolan took one step forward and then aimed a kick for the man’s ribs. He didn’t trust himself to kick the gun, and kicking Frank in the crotch, while satisfying, wouldn’t move him as much. Ribs were a nice, big target. Nolan didn’t hold anything back.